I read The Hobbit and thought it was just okay, which made me not read the rest of the LotR books. I also watched the LotR movies and to be honest thought they sucked. Despite their length, they largely failed to communicate who everyone was, their relationships to each other and their motivations. I felt like the films were made for people who already knew everything that was going on. There were endless conversations that appeared to be about nothing. Nearly 50% of the films were slow motions shots of, again, nothing. The entire thing was a painfully long "wtf" moment. I didn't care who lived or died and there were no feelings of loss or triumph. The closest thing to emotion I felt was the scene with the "who said it would be a man" bit. Anyway, if the books are actually good, they should do a Game of Thrones style series where proper time is taken to establish the characters and why things are happening. I'll never watch another LotR movie again.

As soon as you said "how they handle Doctor Smith" I thought "Gary Oldman", who is my favorite actor. I read on and, holy shit, you then suggested Gary Oldman for the role. Maybe we should start a petition.:)

I can and will circumvent any technological or legal obstacles they can dream of, and they can all go fuck themselves. At some point they're going to run out of dimwits who don't know how to use encryption, VPN, tor, i2p, freenet, bittorrent, etc., and their entire consumer base will have collapsed with a mighty "ARRR!!!" How's that for an end game, you short-sighted, unimaginative, greedy bitches?

How can anyone at a level where they can (and do) make contributions to the Linux kernel not know what they're getting themselves in to. This is like walking into a biker bar dressed like Richard Simmons and complaining that the Hell's Angels are looking at you funny and walking out upset. Torvalds is infamous for tearing people new assholes for submitting imperfect patches, among other things. He's probably not alone in that attitude. I'm not trying to justify or explain the attitude, but shit, people should know it exists by now and be prepared for it.

is the new smoking. If soft drink manufacturers switched back to cane sugar it would help evade stigmatization. Additionally, the cost benefit of using corn syrup has weakened because of the higher price of corn as a result of ethanol production. And cane sugar tastes better; some niche soft drinks have already made the switch and I've tried them.

Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday September 24, 2015 @06:27AM
from the keeping-it-real dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Sciencemag has an interview with the people behind the movie The Martian. Director Ridley Scott, author Andy Weir, and Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science and an adviser on the film talk about the technology and the science in the movie. Scott says: "Almost immediately [after] I decided to do it, we started to have conversations with NASA about process, the habitats, the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), the suits and everything. And they sent us pictures, almost like photographs, of what they hoped it would all be. If there had been anything in [the screenplay] that actually was suspect—they are not shy—they would have said so."

My thesis is that humans are a violent species, and that they enjoy killing each other. A lot of people say I am wrong. Not much else, just that I am wrong.

War seems like a good way to solve a problem, even fun and exciting to watch, until it's your ass (or your son or daughter's) they call up to go. Easy to go to war when you sit at a desk and people you've never locked eyes with go off to kill and die.

Most people aren't violent and would get physically sick if they had to kill someone (though the primitive bloodlust instinct remains in us all). I think the problem is a lack of empathy and personal consequence for those in a position to send soldiers off to die to "fix" their problems. Drones make it even easier, these days.

Why should there be a banner? If you go to Twitter to get your breaking news, you're a maroon.

Because when the goon squad is making its way through your village you should really wait for the AP release before evacuating your family. Twitter is useful for on the ground, at the moment, eye-witness accounts of shit happening. The first news of the assassination of Osama bin Laden broke on Twitter from people hearing the helicopters outside their homes.

For everyone else talking shit about Twitter or calling for it to be nuked from orbit, please take your head out of your ass for a moment and realize it's just a tool, and it's up to you how you use it. You can follow some idiot in Hollywood and complain about how idiotic it is, or you can follow @NASA, @NASA_Skylab, @NASA_SLS, @elonmusk, @SpaceX, @ComsumerReports, @TEDTalks, @mental_floss, @History_Pics, @techreview (MIT), etc.

Twitter is fucking awesome. All it really needs is a "Switch Account" button to easily switch between "personal" and "professional" accounts and some minor usability tweaks.

"A biofilm is any group of microorganisms in which cells stick to each other on a surface. These adherent cells are frequently embedded within a self-produced matrix of extracellular polymeric substance (EPS). Biofilm extracellular polymeric substance, which is also referred to as slime (although not everything described as slime is a biofilm), is a polymeric conglomeration generally composed of extracellular DNA, proteins, and polysaccharides. Biofilms may form on living or non-living surfaces and can be prevalent in natural, industrial and hospital settings."

Another PSA: Don't drink the water in Venezuela; its inhabitants are measured in centimeters.

Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday June 08, 2015 @01:03AM
from the going-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Archaeologists have built a replica of the lift that was used to move lions and other wild animals into the Colosseum 1,500 years ago. It is estimated that a million animals may have been killed in the history of the arena. It took a year and a half for the archaeologists and engineers to build the 23ft-high timber lift, using only materials that would have been available to the ancient Romans. Gary Glassman, a director who made a documentary about the project said, "One of the reasons we are attracted to the Colosseum is because of the incredible violence that went on here. The question it poses is, how could such an advanced culture have staged such bloody spectacles? The Colosseum is a snapshot in stone, a physical embodiment of the culture of Rome."

Would it be more efficient to launch an impactor from Earth to change the asteroid's trajectory or to launch a rocket (using the same rocket that would launch the impactor) carrying a second rocket that would attach to the asteroid and burn to similarly change its trajectory? An impactor would need to be calculated precisely in advance, while attaching a rocket would allow some room for error since its burn could be controlled remotely. The actual feat of getting the rocket to land and securely mount itself would be a challenge however. I don't think "blowing it up" is a good idea, but diversion if possible seems the least-risky and most-effective method.

In the book, they locked open the teleporter network to thousands of Psychlo worlds, then set a nuke off on the homeworld. The fireball washed over the teleportation fields of other teleporter platforms and ignited thousands of planets in giant nuclear fireballs.

I haven't read the book or seen the movie, but holy shit that sounds awesome.